You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.
David Foster WallaceRead
Not that that mystical stuff's necessarily true: The only thing that's capital-T true is that you get to decide how you're going to try to see it.
Interpretation
What this quote means
We have the power to choose our perspective on life, regardless of external truths.
David Foster Wallace emphasizes the importance of personal perspective in interpreting the world around us. He suggests that while there may be a reality that exists independently, our perception of it is shaped by our choices and attitudes, highlighting the subjective nature of truth and experience.
Themes
PerspectiveTruthChoiceRealityInterpretation
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about overcoming adversity, one could quote this to emphasize the power of perspective.
More from David Foster Wallace
All quotes →Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence.
David Foster WallaceRead
It seems important to find ways of reminding ourselves that most 'familiarity' is meditated and delusive.
David Foster WallaceRead
Under fun's new administration, writing fiction becomes a way to go deep inside yourself and illuminate precisely the stuff you don't want to see or let anyone else see, and this stuff usually turns out (paradoxically) to be precisely the stuff all writers and readers share and respond to, feel.
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Acceptance is usually more a matter of fatigue than anything else.
David Foster WallaceRead
Bliss - a-second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious - lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom. Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find (Tax Returns, Televised Golf) and, in waves, a boredom like you’ve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it’s like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom.
David Foster WallaceRead
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